Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers: Large Signal Dynamics and Silicon Photonics Integration
Licentiate thesis, 2016

The GaAs-based vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) is the standard light source in today's optical interconnects, due to its energy efficiency, low cost, and high speed already at low drive currents. The latest commercial VCSELs operate at data rates of up to 28 Gb/s, but it is expected that higher speeds will be required in the near future. One important parameter for the speed is the damping of the relaxation oscillations. A higher damping is affordable at low data rates to reduce signal degradation due to overshoot and jitter, while lower damping is required to reach higher data rates. A VCSEL with the damping optimized for high data rates enabled error-free transmission at record-high data rates of 57 Gb/s over 1 m optical fiber, 55 Gb/s over 50 m optical fiber, and 43 Gb/s over 100 m optical fiber. For future interconnect links it is of interest with tighter integration between the optics and the silicon-based electronics. Employing heterogeneous integration techniques to integrate GaAs-based VCSELs on silicon could potentially enable integrated multi-wavelength VCSEL arrays, thus increasing the data rate through parallelization. Heterogeneous integration of GaAs-based VCSELs would also benefit applications that need short-wavelength light sources, such as photonic integrated circuits for life sciences and biophotonics. By employing ultra-thin divinylsiloxane-bis-benzocyclobutene (DVS-BCB) bonding we have demonstrated silicon-integrated short-wavelength hybrid-cavity VCSELs with up to 1.6 mW optical output power, with modulation bandwidth of 11 GHz and capable of data transmission at data rates up to 20 Gb/s.

vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL).

silicon photonics

high-speed modulation

semiconductor lasers

optical interconnects

laser dynamics

large signal modulation

Heterogeneous integration

A423 (Kollektorn), Kemivägen 9, Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience – MC2, Chalmers University of Technology
Opponent: Dr. Mats Hagberg

Author

Emanuel Haglund

Chalmers, Microtechnology and Nanoscience (MC2), Photonics

High-speed 850 nm VCSELs operating error free up to 57 Gbit/s

Electronics Letters,;Vol. 49(2013)p. 1021-1023

Journal article

Silicon-integrated short-wavelength hybrid-cavity VCSEL

Optics Express,;Vol. 23(2015)p. 33634-33640

Journal article

Impact of Damping on High-Speed Large Signal VCSEL Dynamics

Journal of Lightwave Technology,;Vol. 33(2015)p. 795 - 801

Journal article

20-Gb/s Modulation of Silicon-Integrated Short-Wavelength Hybrid-Cavity VCSELs

IEEE Photonics Technology Letters,;Vol. 28(2016)p. 856 - 859

Journal article

Areas of Advance

Information and Communication Technology

Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (SO 2010-2017, EI 2018-)

Subject Categories

Telecommunications

Nano Technology

Condensed Matter Physics

Infrastructure

Nanofabrication Laboratory

Technical report MC2 - Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience, Chalmers University of Technology: 341

A423 (Kollektorn), Kemivägen 9, Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience – MC2, Chalmers University of Technology

Opponent: Dr. Mats Hagberg

More information

Created

10/7/2017